Physics > Physics and Society

Title:
Trust transitivity in social networks

Abstract: Non-centralized recommendation-based decision making is a central feature of
several social and technological processes, such as market dynamics,
peer-to-peer file-sharing and the web of trust of digital certification. We
investigate the properties of trust propagation on networks, based on a simple
metric of trust transitivity. We investigate analytically the percolation
properties of trust transitivity in random networks with arbitrary degree
distribution, and compare with numerical realizations. We find that the
existence of a non-zero fraction of absolute trust (i.e. entirely confident
trust) is a requirement for the viability of global trust propagation in large
systems: The average pair-wise trust is marked by a discontinuous transition at
a specific fraction of absolute trust, below which it vanishes. Furthermore, we
perform an extensive analysis of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) web of trust, in
view of the concepts introduced. We compare different scenarios of trust
distribution: community- and authority-centered. We find that these scenarios
lead to sharply different patterns of trust propagation, due to the segregation
of authority hubs and densely-connected communities. While the
authority-centered scenario is more efficient, and leads to higher average
trust values, it favours weakly-connected "fringe" nodes, which are directly
trusted by authorities. The community-centered scheme, on the other hand,
favours nodes with intermediate degrees, in detriment of the authorities and
its "fringe" peers.